


These Things Take Time

by salamadersaurus_rex



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Warehouse 13
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:40:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3615321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamadersaurus_rex/pseuds/salamadersaurus_rex





	These Things Take Time

It’s raining, a grey, cotton wool haze of drizzle and smoke and the full underbellies of clouds sagging tiredly over the city. Peggy walks Angie to her audition holding a black umbrella over their heads, dodging puddles to avoid dark spots on Angie’s stockings.

“I can’t believe there’s an entire drawer full of _Nylon_ ,” she’d murmured, dreamily fingering the neatly folded stockings. Peggy leaned against the doorframe and watched, smiling when Angie unrolled a pair and held them up wrinkled against her leg.

“Hey, Peg!”

“Oh, Angie, they’ll look _lovely_ on you.”

Peggy hustles her behind some bulging pinstriped suit as a taxi splashes past, sluicing ill-fitting trousers with dirty water.

Angie’s stockings stay safe.

She stops short by a black back door, turns to face Peggy with a bright smile and her back to the line hunched under the weather against the crumbling, old building.

“We’re here,” she says.

“Break a leg,” Peggy replies breezily, holding the umbrella high so when Angie pulls her into a hug, her hair doesn’t tangle in the silver spikes.

“Will I see you later tonight?” Angie asks.

Peggy shakes her head, breathing in the taste of exhaust fumes and sodden brick dust, and Angie’s perfume. “Probably not, sorry.”

Angie nudges her and winks exaggeratedly. She lowers her voice. “Too busy with super-secret spy stuff, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What about breakfast? Can’t the bad guys at least wait until I’ve had my morning coffee and gossip?”

“I’m sure they will, if I ask nicely.”

“You mean knock some heads together?” Angie jokes. Then she sighs. “It feels like I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“Angie we live together.”

“Peg, I see more of _Jarvis_ than I do you. And he’s not the English I want to talk to in the morning.”

Peggy tries to ignore the fluttering in her chest. “Come now, I’m sure he’s very attentive. He does work for Howard, after all.” She’s seen Howard’s laboratory, and shudders to think of its ‘touch the wrong thing and you’re like to lose your hand’ set up.

“He ain’t you,” Angie pouts.

Another car grumbles wetly past, kicking a puddle up over the curb. Angie skips back, and the sloppy tide spatters a gaggle of hopefuls tripping by towards the end of the line. They squeal, hands waggling fruitlessly over dripping skirt hemlines.

Angie winces. “Ooh, bad luck.”

(Somehow, she doesn’t sound all that sympathetic.)

Peggy chuckles. “You’d better get in line before that happens to you. Here, take this.” She hands the umbrella to her friend. “I don’t want you catching a cold before you catch your big break, Ms Martinelli.”

“Look at you, all dashing and chivalrous,” Angie simpers, still holding the umbrella over them both. She fans herself theatrically with her free hand. “You’ll be taking me to dinner and offering me your coat, next.”

Peggy laughs. “Perhaps another time. I have to get to work, and _you_ have an audition.” She nudges her towards the end of the ever-growing line. “Go on. Break a leg.”

“Maybe I could get you to break a few for me,” Angie mutters, eying the waiting hopefuls.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she smiles, innocently. She leans up and adjusts Peggy’s red hat.

“I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow, tell you all about my audition.”

“I can’t wait.”

Angie grins, tossing a “Bye, English,” over her shoulder before she trudges down the line, sidestepping puddles and cracks in the pavement. Fat droplets of rain roll silver down the tight, black material of the umbrella. Peggy tucks her hands into her coat pockets.

“Knock ‘em dead, Angie.”

* * *

Souza’s the only one in the SSR offices when she arrives, dripping dirty rainwater on the floor. He’s poring over a thin file at his desk, where fresh mug of coffee breathes curlicues of steam in the dim light of his desk lamp. He looks up as she unbuttons her coat.

“Hey, Carter.”

“Good morning, Daniel. Where is everyone?”

He shrugs. “Late. Or not coming in. It’s been a big fat pile of nothing for three weeks, I don’t think anyone wants to bother.”

Peggy frowns. “So they’re all off celebrating a dry spell and we’re left, what? Sifting through cold cases and hoping the world doesn’t end whilst we’re the only two in the office?”

“Seems that way.”

She huffs and hangs her coat up. Straightens her jacket. “Well in that case, I’m going to need a cup of tea.”

* * *

She peers over Souza’s shoulder, cradling a chipped yellow mug in her hands. He’s making pencil notes in the margin next to a fuzzy photograph of a large, empty crate. ‘ _ITEM’:_ is stencilled onto the side of the crate, but the photograph is too blurry to make out the number that comes after.

“Making sure I’m not still investigating you?” Souza asks.

“The last time I checked I didn’t look like an empty crate.”

“So I’m getting the benefit of the doubt?”

“Until you try to arrest me, at least.”

“That puts me completely at ease,” he says distractedly. He squares off the paper he’s taken from the file, and hands it to her. “You know, this case is over a year old, but the specifics are almost exactly the same as the Stark case.”

Peggy sets her mug down on Souza’s desk. She scrapes a chair loudly across the floor, plonking herself down and flipping through the file. Volatile technology, stolen from a secure vault owned by a wealthy inventor. Little-to-no other information available.

“Why was it dropped?” she asks.

“No evidence,” Souza replies. “All they ever had to work with was that empty crate, and the guy didn’t even really say what was in it. We had to _guess_ it was something dangerous.”

“It always is,” Peggy muses.

“Anyway, I was thinking I might head down to the warehouse, check it out.”

“And leave me to man the office alone?” She glares at him out of the corner of her eye, and he shakes his head, laughing.

“I’ll get my coat,” Peggy smirks.

* * *

The warehouse is empty, and cold. Water drips through rusty cracks in the corrugated iron roof, pooling on the uneven concrete floor. Green slime trails down the pocked walls, glistening in the warm light of Peggy’s torch. Her heels click loudly in the silence.

“Our guy’s long gone,” Souza calls from the door. “After the investigation was dropped he just left.”

“I don’t suppose he left an address?”

“Nope.”

“Of course not,” Peggy murmurs to herself, sweeping her torch across the damp walls again. There’s nothing to suggest there’s ever been anything in the warehouse but cold air and algae.

“Perhaps we should head back to the office,” she says. “There’s nothing here.”

Souza nods. “It was a long shot anyway.”

The door closes behind him, and Peggy sweeps her torch around the warehouse one last time. Iron and concrete and water and slime. One door in and one door out, locked when there’s something of value, and guarded by as many lackey’s as one wishes to hire.

Difficult to burgle, but not impossible, so long as the prize was suitable motivation.

* * *

They spend the rest of the afternoon trying to guess what was inside the box.

“So, _Item: smudged, impossible to read number_ ,” Souza says, tapping the stub of his pencil against the rim of his mug. “What do we think?”

Peggy stands at the recently replaced window, playing with the blinds and watching cars roll by on the street below. She wonders if Angie’s audition is over yet. Wonders how it went. “Exactly what I thought last time you asked, thirty seconds ago,” she says.

“So, _Item: smudged, impossible to read number_. ‘I’m hungry.’” Souza says. “Okay. Let’s drop this, get something to eat. Where do you want to go?”

Angie’s laundromat. But her shift doesn’t start for another hour. Peggy peers out at the darkening sky, threatening rain and nightfall in one fell swoop. Her head hurts. “I don’t mind.”

Souza shrugs into his coat. “Alright. I’ll pick. I know a really nice little Italian place, a few blocks from here. What do you say?”

“Fine.” Peggy’s stomach grumbles at her again. She checks the clock, decides the mystery crate and the worrying lack of both colleagues and criminals can wait until the morning (after breakfast), and puts her hat on. Souza holds the door open for her.

“Just one question,” Peggy says as they get into the lift.

“Yeah?”

“Do they serve alcohol?”

* * *

Something draws her back to the SSR offices, some feeling in her gut that isn’t the pleasant, full feeling of a hearty meal and some excellent red wine. She flicks on the lights and wanders over to Souza’s desk. The file is still there, open and covered in pencil notes. She still can’t make out the number on the side of the crate. She sits down, absentmindedly swirls the long-since cold, oily dregs of coffee in Souza’s cup just for something to do with her hands whilst she reads.

 _ITEM:_ what? What is it about this case that nags at her?

Peggy sighs. She’s just about to close the file and go and see Angie when the phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Is this the SSR?” The voice sounds mechanical, deep and distorted. It makes her think of the Leviathan agents with scarred throats.

“Who is speaking?”

“I have information for an SSR agent about a robbery.”

Peggy picks up a notebook and Souza’s pencil, tucking the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “I’m an SSR agent.”

“You missed something at the warehouse.”

Peggy feels something cold slithering in her stomach. She tries to keep her voice level. “And what was that, exactly?”

“Go back to the warehouse,” the voice states. She waits for more, but there’s only silence at the other end.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Peggy thinks she can pick up the sound of breathing, but the traffic outside the window is too loud, rumbling incessantly through the rain. “I’m sorry, but if you’ve no useful information for us I’m just going to have to hang up.”

“Wait.”

Peggy smiles.

“The object that was stolen, it’s more dangerous than you can imagine.”

“How so? What does it do?”

“Time.” The voice crackles. “It manipulates time.”

“That’s not possible,” she murmurs. “How? What exactly does it-”

“Go back to the warehouse.” The voice interrupts. Then: _Click._

Peggy lowers the receiver gently. She’s scrawled _Warehouse_ and _Time_ on her notepad.

“Call for backup, Carter,” she murmurs to herself. Nothing good can come from investigating empty warehouses late at night, at the whim of some unknown voice at other end of the phone. But Souza had drunk more than she had, and Jarvis had offered to pick Angie up, and there’s no way in hell she’s calling Thompson.

Peggy checks her revolver. Straightens her hat. She leaves a note for Souza.

_Got a tip. Gone to warehouse. If I’m not back by the time you read this, call Jarvis before assuming I’m dead. I’m probably just mortally wounded.  
\- Peggy Carter._

* * *

She balances her gun on her arm, pointing her torch steadily ahead of her. She methodically sweeps the beam across the rafters, dancing shadows towards the far end of the warehouse. It stopped raining on her way over, but water still drips from the ceiling. Something scatters away from the light of her torch and she stops dead, carefully easing the light back onto it.

It’s a crate, printed with the same, smudged number. Peggy steps closer to get a better look, but the door suddenly crashes open behind her. She whirls round, using the crate as cover and comes face to face with four thugs toting lengths of lead piping in gloved hands. One reaches out and flicks the light switch, flooding the warehouse in bright, searchlight-white light.

“SSR?” one of the men grunts. He’s short, bow-legged and stocky. He has a green woollen hat pulled low over eyes hidden in the creases of his ruddy face.

Peggy thumbs back the safety on her revolver, stepping around the crate to approach the men. “Who are you? Who employed you? What is in that crate?”

The man hefts his weapon, the meaty thud of lead piping smacking against leather cracking through the warehouse.

“We ask all the questions.”

“I’m the one with the gun.”

He chuckles, a rough sound, and after a moment the others join uncertainly in. Peggy see’s one of them shrug at the other, as if he doesn’t get the joke.

“I fail to see what’s so funny,” Peggy says.

“That’s a pretty little revolver, darlin’. You ever actually fired it? Let me guess, your boyfriend took you to the range, stood real close behind you and helped you figure out which bit was the trigger?”

He cackles, and now the other guys are laughing more earnestly. Peggy sighs, levelling the revolver between the ringleader’s eyes. A sudden, hot blast of air whips Peggy’s hair into her eyes. She tugs at it, blinking as a loud crash reverberates through the warehouse.

“What the-?”

The crate is shattered, straw spilling out and sticking to the wet concrete.

There’s a body lying surrounded by splintered wood.

The ringleader gulps. He gestures with a nod for one of his cronies to check the body in the crate, muttering hoarsely “Go check it out.”

The two other thugs crowd uneasily together behind the ringleader, muttering. He glances over at his mate, crouched over the body, daintily prodding its white neck.

“Harry, what the hell are you doing?” He hisses.

“Trying to find a pulse!”

“ _And_?”

“I can’t find one!”

The ringleader shakes his head, grimacing. “So she’s probably dead, fat-head! Get back over here!”

He turns back to Peggy. Harry starts to wander over, trailing his bit of pipe, but then the body shifts. He turns pale. The ringleader isn’t paying attention. Straightening his back, he says “Are you from the SSR, sweetheart? Was that you, dumping that body there? You trying to scare us, huh?”

Peggy half watches Harry creeping towards the body in the crate, his pipe clutched in both hands. The ringleader clicks his fingers impatiently. “Hey, doll. I’m talking to you. Are you-“

He’s cut off by the meaty thudding sound of the body in the crate socking Harry so hard across the jaw he’s tossed backwards, his head cracking on the concrete floor.

“Wha-?”

Peggy makes her move, darting forwards and sweeping the legs from under the nearest thug. She shoves an elbow into the ringleader’s gut and he doubles over, gaping like a fish tossed onto dry land. Peggy whips her revolver across his jaw and he collapses slowly to his knees, eyes bulging. Peggy startles at the crackle of electricity, her gaze jumping to the lights over her head.

“I’d back away,” a cool voice, accented like her own, says. And Peggy trips backwards a few paces, taking in the sight of a slim, dark-haired woman cradling a ball of electricity in her hands. She blinks and the ball is on the floor, burning into the backs of her eyes as it rolls, spitting lightning at the three thugs struggling to their feet.

The woman turns her back and Peggy does the same, the flash from the ball of electricity burning her closed eyelids bright orange. Slowly, she turns around.

The four men are unconscious on the floor, chests rising and falling slightly under the suddenly dim lights.

“Tesla grenade,” the body in the crate says, nonchalantly. She picks her way around the bodies, bending down to pick up a round, metal cage that Peggy assumes must be the remains of the electric grenade.

Peggy grips her revolver, cautiously approaching the woman. “Who are you?” she asks. “How did you get here?”

“My name is Helena,” she replies, turning to survey the warehouse. “I’m not entirely sure how I got here. Or where I am. What happened, exactly.” She says it more like an order, than a question.

“You appeared out of nowhere whilst those blockheads were trying to interrogate me. It was quite a shock.”

Helena frowns, and surveys the warehouse intently. Peggy watches. She notes Helena’s attire as the woman bends down to dig through the straw lining the crate. She’s wearing black trousers which cling to her legs, and a loose, white, blouse. Definitely _not_ the accepted fashion.

“You’re British, but those men spoke with very strong New York accents. Where exactly am I?”

Peggy hesitates, wondering if the woman has amnesia. Can appearing out of thin air cause amnesia? “We’re in New York.”

“Right.” After so long in America with only Angie’s over-proportioned approximations of her accent to remind her of home, it’s disconcerting to hear Helena speak like Peggy does.

“Where are you from, Helena?”

“South Dakota,” she answers distractedly.

“That’s no accent I’ve ever heard in South Dakota.”

“An astute observation.”

“Humour me. Where are you from really?”

“Originally, London. Much like you, I assume. My turn to ask a question.”

“Go on.”

“I was with three other people. Did you see them?”

“No. How do I know you’re not Leviathan?”

Helena looks puzzled, but answers Peggy. “You don’t.”

Then she pulls a gun on her.

Peggy swings her revolver up. Locks her arm.

They pull their triggers at the same time. Peggy feels a whoosh of electricity crackle hotly past her cheek. Her bullet wafts a strand of Helena’s hair.

The thug shouldering through the door drops screaming to the floor, clutching his shattered knee. Peggy doesn’t doubt that the man behind her is splayed out, unconscious once again.

“That’ll smart when he wakes up,” she observes. “Nice gun.”

“It’s a Tesla. I don’t like guns.”

Peggy shrugs. “I suppose it does the job.”

“What is Leviathan?” Helena queries as they walk towards the writhing man in the doorway. “And do you still think I’m part of it?”

“A nasty Russian organisation I very much hope I’ve seen the last of. And I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, for now.”

Helena nods. “I could use your help…”

“Peggy Carter,” Peggy supplies.

“I could use your help, Ms Carter.”

“Actually, it’s Agent.” She nudges the fallen thug with her shoe. “Let me just make a quick phone call.”


End file.
